President-elect Trump’s pick for Labor secretary has organized labor cheering and business groups sounding worried as the atypically labor-friendly choice could signal a new and more receptive stance toward unions from Republicans, who have long resisted labor’s agenda.

Following a recent increase in popularity among unions and the precedent-breaking appearance of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien at the Republican National Convention in July, the choice of Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.) reflects the growing political importance of labor after an election in which working-class voters delivered a strong turnout for Trump and the GOP.

Chavez-DeRemer, who lost her own reelection bid in November in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, is one of only three Republicans in Congress who backed the PRO Act, the wide-ranging labor law that would rein in the so-called gig economy and boost workers’ organizing rights.

She was also one of just eight Republicans to co-sponsor a similar bill to strengthen public-sector unions, which conservatives have railed against in various formats including the Heritage Foundation’s programmatic Project 2025.

While those bills in their current forms have little chance of moving forward in a Republican Congress, the decision to place one of their few Republican supporters at the top of the Labor Department is an unusual move from conservatives, labor experts told The Hill, and one that could indicate some shifting power dynamics.

“Trump has been very transactional,” Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor........

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